“The egregious, heinous acts of El Chapo must not be cheapened through clever narratives of things illicit,” a spokesperson from the luxury drug and alcohol rehab tells Breitbart News in an exclusive statement.

“Sean Penn’s discourse may be all too convincing for those who pity – and perhaps revere – El Chapo,” the spokesperson added. “That is explicitly because the public does not actively work with those suffering from acute substance use disorders.”

The spokesperson continued:

Penn says it himself in his feature for the Rolling Stone, nearly half of our methamphetamine, heroin, and cocaine imported to the U.S. is the doing of El Chapo’s illicit empire- why then deem the source of overdose deaths, sundered families, and societal unrest as ‘The President [of Mexico?’ Should we then measure all public officials in the light of how many atrocities they may reap on their nations? Elected or not. Penn alludes the presidency is up for grabs if one can be interesting enough, successful enough, and violent enough to rip the title away from those prompters of peace.

The spokesperson from Harbor Village – which treats those suffering from chronic addiction – states Penn’s framing of drug addicts as mere “consumers” of drugs is a denial itself of the pain of addiction:

Penn asks if “The American public, [are] not indeed complicit in what we demonize? We are the consumers, and as such, we are complicit in every murder. . .”

To assert this is to pin the disease of addiction as a mere whim one might purchase on the shelf of a department store. Addiction is not a matter of choice, but of biological and psychological affliction. Addicts are not ‘consumers’ but victims of their disease- with roots stemming in the nullification of environmental or psychological trauma. Addiction is inborn, genetic.

To brand those as criminals in every murder and debauchery of El Chapo directly refutes Penn’s initial assertion of the War on Drugs: “This war’s policies have significantly served to kill our children…lost with it, any possible vision of reform.” If our children are the ire to be condemned for consuming illicit substances – as the would-be consumers Penn dictates – is El Chapo then absolved from his crimes, as he is the mere producer in our nation of capitalism?

As Breitbart News reported in November, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Mexican transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) have significantly increased opium production and shifted their operations to expand heroin trafficking in recent years. Heroin is made from the resin of opium poppy plants. The TCOs have worked to make the illicit drug readily available to Americans as the number of heroin overdose deaths in the U.S. surge.

A recent report in Science Daily observed that nonmedical use of prescription opioids – such as Vicodin, Percocet, and Oxycontin – has grown increasingly dangerous in the United States, with increases seen in number of overdoses, hospital treatment admissions, and deaths. A newly released study – “Nonmedical Opioid Use and Heroin Use in a Nationally Representative Sample of US High School Seniors” – finds that three-fourths of high school heroin users began with prescription opioids.

Researcher Dr. Joseph J. Palamar noted in his study, “As frequency of lifetime opioid use increased, so too did the odds for reporting heroin use, with over three-quarters of heroin users reporting lifetime nonmedical opioid use. More frequent and more recent nonmedical opioid use was associated with increased odds for reporting heroin use.”

The Harbor Village spokesperson said Penn is sugar-coating El Chapo’s activities:

The danger here lies in the willful posturing of El Chapo as the unsung hero who has throughout his life sprinkled sugary, good deeds on legions of gore, and the willful rejection of the culmination of his life’s work, which has been to singularly prescribe death and addiction to the American people, and beyond. When we cease romanticizing the drug lord in the robes of a Shepherd, it is then – and only then – that those who have lost, live, and wallow in addiction may have a chance of light and hope in a country that continues to disavow the disease of addiction.

“When public attention is enraptured with that prescriber of death, it is his victims who lose voice,” the spokesperson concluded.